Author: NY TIMES

How many ways are there to leave this universe?Perhaps the best known exit entails the death of a star. In 1939 the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his student Hartland Snyder, of the University of California, Berkeley, predicted that when a sufficiently massive star runs out of thermonuclear fuel, it collapses inward and keeps collapsing forever, shrink-wrapping space, time and light around itself in what today is called a black hole.But it turns out that a dead star might not be needed to make a black hole. Instead, at least in the early universe, giant clouds of primordial gas may…

Aun así, mientras me cortejaba, me hizo la tarta de crema de banana más deliciosa de mi vida, con una capa de ganache de chocolate entre la corteza de galleta y el relleno de banano. Este hombre tocó una banana por mí, repetidamente, y eso significó mucho para mí.Jason también fue el primer hombre con el que salí cuya presencia no me hizo sentir avergonzada por mi cuerpo. Ambos habíamos interiorizado la vergüenza a la gordura, pero cuando estábamos solos, era como si nos anuláramos mutuamente. Pedíamos alitas y papas fritas con chile y queso, y veíamos dos películas en…

It was dark when Daiki Funamizu pulled his truck into the market in Osaka, ending a 15-hour haul down Japan’s main island. He rubbed his sore back and wiped the sweat off his forehead. Then he began several more hours of work to unload 500 boxes of red apples.Mr. Funamizu, 35, said he used to like driving. But now, with drivers getting stretched thinner as Japan’s population shrinks and workers desert the industry, “I must say I hate it,” he said.Japan’s trucking industry is a crucial cog in one of the world’s largest economies, and it is the lifeblood of…

10. Astrud Gilberto: “Berimbau”The 83-year-old Brazilian bossa nova singer Astrud Gilberto, who died on June 5, was best known as the serenely stylish vocalist who sang Stan Getz’s “The Girl From Ipanema.” But her discography is full of other treasures, like her lovely 1966 album of songs arranged by Gil Evans, “Look to the Rainbow,” on which this elegant, atmospheric track named for a one-stringed Brazilian instrument appears. (Listen on YouTube)11. The Band: “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”Robbie Robertson’s music had an almost eerie way of fusing the past and the present, creating compositions that sound at once…

“Our forces continue to intensify ground operations in northern and southern Gaza,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief spokesman for the Israeli military, said on Thursday night.Israel says it has achieved operational control in some areas in the north, but the grinding progress is leading some prominent Israeli military analysts and political commentators to point to a widening gap between the reality on the ground and the rhetoric of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who pledged on Wednesday that the war “will continue until Hamas is eliminated — until victory.”As the Gazan death toll has soared and civilians have been pushed…

Fishing in Serbia’s troubled waters after a contested general election, Russia on Monday accused the West of orchestrating anti-government street protests in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, that flared into violence on Sunday evening.Claims of a Western plot by Russia’s ambassador to Serbia, Alexander Botsan-Harchenko, were the latest efforts by Moscow to thwart a so far mostly fruitless diplomatic campaign by the United States and Europe to lure Serbia out of Russia’s orbit and break traditionally strong ties between the two Slavic and Orthodox Christian nations.Previously peaceful street protests in Belgrade over what the opposition says was a rigged general election…

Photographer Simbarashe Cha documents fashion on Fifth Avenue in December. Source link

More than two years ago, lawmakers approved billions of dollars to build out a national electric vehicle charging network in the hopes of encouraging more drivers to switch to cleaner cars. The money, included in the bipartisan infrastructure law, was intended to help assure drivers they could reliably travel longer distances without running out of power.But a robust federal charging network is still years away. Only two states — Ohio and New York — have opened any charging stations so far. A handful of others have broken ground on projects in recent weeks, with the aim of completing them in…

Essra Mohawk, a prolific singer-songwriter and self-described flower child whose soulful, dreamlike songs captured the sunny optimism of the Woodstock era, and whose varied career included performing with Frank Zappa and Jerry Garcia and seeing one of her songs turned into a hit single by Cyndi Lauper, died on Dec. 11 at her home in Nashville. She was 75.The cause was cancer, her cousin Jeff Hurvitz said.Over the course of a career that lasted more than a half century, Ms. Mohawk never achieved the fame of contemporaries like Joni Mitchell, Carole King or Laura Nyro (to whom she was often…

The number of Gaza residents reported killed during Israel’s 10-week-old war in the territory has already surpassed the toll for any other Arab conflict with Israel in more than 40 years and perhaps any since Israel’s founding in 1948.The Gaza Health Ministry said on Thursday that the death toll had exceeded 20,000 for the first time, putting it just above one of the most authoritative estimates of those killed in Lebanon by Israel’s 1982 invasion.And though Gaza officials have said counting the dead has become increasingly challenging, most experts say the figure is likely an undercount and express shock at…